The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1887-11-08
SENATOR FRYE TALKS.
Economic Lessons Learned in the Factories
and Shops In England.

| New York Special Philadelphia Press.
Senator Frye OF Maine, is spending the week
here one of the speakers in the State cam
| pa1gn. He has been investigating the industrial
| situation in Europe ever since last spring. and
during his tour abroad visited every country
but Russia. He came back few weeks ago
loaded down with information and statistics and
In the best of health and spirits. 1 met him re-
Gently just as he was leaving with ex-senator
Miller for Albany. The tariff will be the
great question before Congress this winter" he
said. land in the national campaign next year.
Labor represents more than half the cost of
every manufactured article, and 1 made up my
mind year ago to make tour of the European
workshops and learn for myself and by actual
observation just what American manufacturers
had to compete with in the one item of wages
alone. With mountains bullying with iron
ores. our earth with the best pottery clays, our
factories turning out as fine silks any woman
wants to wear. and furnaces making as
good steel rails as England can vet the dutiable
products of foreign labor that reach this country
IN a single year amount to over 5000, 000, 600.
That means that the home market has been
undersold by outsiders to that extent and that
our Industries are just much out of pocket.
The one item of labor makes this difference in
their favor, despite the great natural advantages
which we possess"
''What did you gather from your observations
IN the European labor fieldf" [ asked.
First, that one-third of the working people
of all Europe are in the most wretched condition
of abject poverty replied Senator Frye. .Sec-
ondly. that you may hunt the entire pay
rolls, as did, and only once in 1000 names can
you find a laborer skilled otherwise Fwho is
earning dollar day. In Brussels, skilled
women in the lace factories get about twenty
cents day. France and Germany do not pay
any higher wages in the same line. while Italy and
Switzerland pay less by five or six cents. L
went over many of the iron and steel factories
IN Belgium and could not find single man who
got more than eighty cents. The average there
was about sixty cents AT the Longloan Iron
Works, on the Clyde, where they make 300 tons
of pig iron day, the laborers get from fifty
four to sixty two cents per day; skilled men
earn seventyfve cents to SLIP and more of
them the lower figure rather than the higher
one What sort of life would the Pennsylvania
plg-iron makers live if they had such wages?
Why. coal and iron miners have to work hard to
make over So per week. and out Of that they
have to board themselves; A good many of the
free-trade orators tell us of the great Clyde and
its army of contented workmen. If they would
go over there as have, and see nearly 10000
families in Glasgow living in one room apiece,
and more than half the men and women out of
work, perhaps they would change the basis of
their arguments for tariff reduction.
The condition of the working people of
England and Ireland to-day" continued the
Maine Senator. lis so near pauperism that it
cannot be called anything else. English indus
tries are almost at stand-still. and large pro-
portion of the wage earners out of work.
Three dollars week is high average among
mechanics and the so. 900 women EMPLOYED in
the Manchester cotton mills make less than half
that. In Germany the women in the cotton
factories earn from twenty to twenty five cents
day and the men average fifty. In Naples,
Italy, the average wages for cotton hands are
S.. 80 per week, taking the whole mills through
but the women get eighteen cents day and the
unskilled men about double that The most ex-
pert operative in Venice silk factory that
visited was woman who had worked there
forty years. She averaged twelve cents day.
while hundreds of young girls around her earned
but six
IF we paid such wages over here suppose
we could do without tariff" suggested.
1--WE certainly could" answered Mr. Frye,
land If the tariff thinkers succeed we will have to
come down to the European wage-level or else
cease competing and depend entirely on foreign
ers for our goods We cannot appreciate the
difference between the working classes here and
abroad because not enough of our people have
the time to investigate it as I did. My trip was
the greatest investment of time and money that
ever made. / industrial Europe with my
own eyes, and saw the terrible place in life the
foreign wage-e Garner holds. He is utterly with
out hope for the future and would be thankful
for the assurance that he will be able to keep
poverty from his door in the years to come.
The idea of getting ahead of the world of ever
getting together enough money out of his earn
lngs to live decently and comfortably never
enters his head. excent rs a dreamn